


War Is Where the Heart Is

by peloquine



Category: Spartacus: War of the Damned
Genre: Agron's POV, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angsty Schmoop, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:03:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peloquine/pseuds/peloquine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agron finds himself yet of this world, but it is not the end of his struggles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	War Is Where the Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

> I never thought I would write anything set in canon-'verse, but miracles do apparently happen. 
> 
> It is very Agron-centric, btw.

His grasp on consciousness keeps slipping, and at times he falls under for long enough to believe himself firmly in the afterlife, only to blink awake again to gentle hands tending his wound and even gentler fingers putting a cup to his lips and helping him swallow cold water and lukewarm broth. He coughs and sometimes he struggles against swallowing because the memory of his mouth filling with blood in the last moments of the battle is still most vivid in his mind.

He knows that they lost, but not by how much.

It gets easier, slipping loose from the clutches of the darkness, and he smiles up at Nasir as he examines the wound in his side for infection, and when he is able to lift his arms, he touches his fingers as he helps him drink his fill.

Initially, is not noticeable to him, as weak and wounded as he is, barely strong enough to keep himself conscious for longer periods of time, but something has changed between them. Nasir no longer meets his eyes, and while he cares for Agron with a gentle and tireless hand, he does not touch him more than is necessary and his care do not extend further than it does to any the others lying dying and hurting in the sick tent.

Agron wonders why he is here and not in their tent and why Nasir has yet to touch him in that way he always does after Agron returns from a fight Nasir had not joined him in – desperately and gratefully, to ensure himself that his blood still flows and that they are both yet of this world.

There is still fighting, Agron knows, because one day Nasir comes into the tent to dress a wound of his own. It is just a small scrape across his bicep, but Agron cannot breathe for a short moment when he lays eyes on the blood and he is relieved when Nasir has tied a cloth tightly around it to staunch the bleeding.

His heart yet beats.

It is easy now to separate day and night and to experience the passing of time. He is growing stronger and he will soon be able to leave this bed. He will be able to walk, and dress, and hold a sword. He will be able to take Nasir in his arms and whisper to him of how joyous he is of drawing breath still and being united with him again, and how grateful he is for Nasir coming for him even though they believed him dead.

It happens he catches glimpses of Castus, and sometimes of Nasir and Castus together, but he thinks himself a fool now for ever suspecting Nasir of regarding him as a potential lover. Maybe there was a lick of interest and lust there at one point, but now there is nothing but amiable camaraderie; even if Castus’ eyes still follow his movements longingly.

There are many new wounds to dress and more fallen warriors to leave behind every time the sun sets. But there are also babes being brought into this world – he can hear their hungry cries – and men and women training hard and even laughing outside the tent. He smiles, but Nasir does not smile back and when Agron reaches for him, he moves away.

Agron’s heart yet beats, but it is lost to him.

- 

He has been fewer days in the sick tent than he would have believed due to his muddled sense of time. It nevertheless feels like rebirth when he steps out of it, but the steel he picks up despite being told not to by both Nasir and Laeta is heavier than it used to be.

He lets one fingertip slide along the flat of the blade and wishes it was Nasir’s skin.

Spartacus claps him on his back, mindful of his injuries, and welcomes him back to the world of the living.

He learns that Crixus has fallen. Naevia’s face is set as if in stone and her blade is nearly perpetually slick with Roman blood.

He hears people tell of how the little man fights like a someone twice his size and he grins proudly at that, even as his heart seize painfully in his chest every time he sees Nasir strapping his armour and weapons on to leave for another battle.

They still fight. And flee. They are still free. Nasir returns every time. To the camp; not to him. The wound in Agron’s side and the many scrapes and cuts slowly healing all across his body is a lesser pain compared to that.

He shares a tent with Naevia. The two of them has never gone well together, but they are both alone now, seeking whatever pale shadow of warmth they can find. And Agron is frantically, but quietly, seeking Nasir’s forgiveness and offering whatever comfort he can to dearest friend might be a step forward on that path.

Agron gets up from his pallet in the darkest hour of night one time to quench his thirst only to find a sharp blade pressed to his throat. Naevia sleeps opposite from him, and her quiet swiftness is impressive. She offers her apologies, wide-eyed in the dusk of their tent, but Agron understands. Her life and hunger for blood are all she has left now.

He wonders how Nasir makes it through the chilly nights without him, if he shivers more or less now when he wraps himself in blankets rather than Agron’s arms.

- 

“You are not yet ready to wield a sword,” Nasir tells him when he finds Agron training with a rebel that has recently joined their cause. She is unpractised and weak and very far from a gladiator, but she is eager and swift to take up instruction and Agron does not doubt that many Romans will soon fall by her sword.

“My body is mending,” he says, easily disarming her. She falls down into the dirt, but she retrieves her sword and returns to her feet, snarling at him. She moves to launch attack, but Agron steps back. “Enough for now,” he tells her.

“It would heal quicker if you took to bed,” Nasir says.

“It would heal quicker if my heart found its way back to me,” Agron says, aiming to offer Nasir not guilt but truth, as he hands his practice sword over to another new recruit. It is time for words. Maybe he has been running all this time, as Nasir admonished him, but has grown tired of it and cannot go any further.

“Your heart never left you,” Nasir says and his lower lip trembles, just once, like it did when Agron told him to turn from him. “But you chose your path of blood and battle.”

“Nasir.” Agron reaches out a hand for him.

But he turns away, again, with shimmering eyes. “You said you had no life with me.”

- 

His body heals. Soon he is able to fight and he stays close to Nasir’s side, and when they rend Roman flesh next to each other it feels almost like it used to.

His hands still give him trouble, however, and when Agron has cleaned his sword and put it back into its scabbard, Nasir puts salve on the old wounds.

“You saved me,” Agron says softly. He does not remember much, because all that existed then was the unbearable pain, but he does remember Nasir. He remembers cries of anguish and tears of relief.

“Not in time,” Nasir replies, his hands suddenly clutching at Agron’s, and Agron cannot understand how he can feel guilty when his interference is the sole reason Agron yet walks and breathes.

Nasir takes him back to his bed that night, but his bed only. It is bittersweet, letting Nasir strip him of his armour and remove his in return while checking the minor cuts they have acquired for swelling or bleeding; it is a sacred ritual between them, between lovers, and they do no longer stand as such. Nasir carries scars unfamiliar to Agron, and he traces them carefully with his fingertips, hating that he was not there to see them close over.

There is an abundance of blankets on Nasir’s pallet, but he pushes most of them aside before spreading Agron out on it.

Agron expects him to be rough with it, made so by anger and grief, but he is gentle and wary of Agron’s still-mending injuries. He presses one hand lightly to Agron’s side where the large wound – almost mirroring the one Nasir almost died from so long ago – is scarring over as he enters him, and Agron pushes back against him, desperate to close all distance between them.

Afterwards, Nasir rolls away from him and enfolds himself in those of the blankets he does not force upon Agron with an impatient glower.

- 

Agron is still in command, still right hand to Spartacus – and even more so now that Crixus has fallen. As soon as he is healed enough he steps back into that place. He has regained his position in the rebel camp, and in Nasir’s tent and bed, but not yet in his heart.

“You are a fucking fool,” Saxa spits at him in their own tongue when she catches him watching Nasir feed the horses. “You pissed on him – and for what? Bleeding out on a battlefield and being nailed to a fucking stick?”

“Blood and battle is all I have ever known.” He has repeated the words to himself many times, attempting to shield himself from how the hurt in Nasir’s eyes and the way he shies away from him cuts at him. Ignoring the way the truth behind them crumbles.

“You knew _that_.” Saxa nods at Nasir. She spits on her knife and rubs vigorously with a piece of cloth. It is turning brown with dried blood. “You had life and love. And someone eager for your cock,” she adds with a vicious grin, because she is Saxa after all.

“I will never be from his side again,” Agron says, even though he is not much more than shadow, hungering to step back into the light he is denied.

“He is from yours,” Saxa points out harshly, removing the other blade from her hip.

-

It is only in the privacy of their tent that Nasir allows himself to be his again. He is insatiable; straddling Agron hips and moving over him for as long as he is able before either or both of them are overcome, or pulling Agron atop of him to feel his weight press him into the ground.

He does not reciprocate when Agron kisses him afterwards. He allows light touches, but if Agron moves to draw him into his arms, Nasir shifts away. Agron aches with his silent rejection, but takes everything he is willing to give him and makes attempt to consider it enough, even though it is not.

“Is this all you want from me?” he asks quietly one time, when Nasir’s face is hidden at Agron’s neck, mouth worrying the skin there, their cocks filling quickly as their skin turns slick with sweat between them.

“My body remains intact from the harm you inflicted,” Nasir mumbles back, pulls away with Agron’s skin between his teeth. Agron has missed the marks, and he arches into it, gasping. “It still longs for you.”

That night it is Agron who turns from Nasir, and they lie with their backs to each other until morning, both of them cold to their bones and struggling to find rest.

- 

His blade grows heavier in his hand for each Roman he strikes down. They have been fighting for a long time, and just like everyone else Agron has lost much. He even grieves for Crixus – mostly because he was the best of them at keeping Spartacus firmly rooted on the ground and preventing him from crushing them all under the weight of his ideals.

Nasir’s skin hardens with new scars.

Agron no longer dreams of the sweet cries of dying Romans and the joy of vengeance. In their place are peace and calm, and the feel of his hip unburdened by sword.

Nasir scarcely leave off his weapons anymore; none of them do. They are hunted and blood drunk. They are fallen gods of death, standing with one foot already in the underworld, dragging scores upon scores of their enemies with them before finally crossing over.

Victory has become a foreign, elusive concept. They fight only to last another day.

- 

They stand hesitantly triumphant after a near-fatal engagement with what they believed was a Roman scouting party until more and more solider welled down into the valley were they had foolishly attacked.

But they had the strength of numbers, if barely, and they are rabid as the dogs Rome considers them to be and no grown man or woman in the rebel camp stands unable to wield some weapon with deadly purpose anymore, so they do triumph, and immediately after the last scream quiets, Nasir drops his spear, places one hand over Agron’s heart and reaches up to kiss him.

Agron stumbles back half a step in surprise, and Nasir draws away, swallowing heavily with a guarded look in his dark eyes. Like he is the one not allowed.

Agron has no other response to that but cupping the side of his neck and moving in closer, pressing their foreheads together in a gesture that causes him to ache with its familiarity. Nasir smells of blood and metal.

“I thought our lives forfeited,” he says.

“And yet we defy both Rome and death,” Agron replies and he grins like he has not done since he found himself woken by the searing pain of having nails forced through the flesh of hid hands.

Nasir returns the smile and reaches up to fit his mouth across his.

That night it is sweet and endless, and Nasir tangles his limbs together with Agron’s and does not let go until the dawn is long passed.

Agron wonders how he ever survived without this.

- 

“We can only dangle our cocks between the jaws of the beast for so long before they snap shut,” Gannicus says.

Spartacus does not contradict him. He looks weary, like the rest of them, and he nods.

Agron knows that this is it. They can run no longer. They will turn around, brandishing sword and steel, and meet their enemy – make one final stand for freedom.

Agron once believed that they would shatter the very foundation of the empire and dance upon its dusty, blood-stained grave, drinking and fucking to celebrate their true freedom.

That vision now lies dead upon too many battlefields, having bled out with each fallen rebel, but there are other paths to true freedom.

- 

“I would have you live,” Agron interrupts Nasir when he asks for Agron’s opinion on Spartacus’ plan of attack, and Nasir straightens at his words, eyes already darkening with fury.

“With me forever by your side,” he adds and topples Nasir down on top of him and holds him close, smiling into his hair as Nasir relaxes and swats him good-naturedly on his arm.

He rests his forehead against Nasir’s chest and listens to the sound of his heart. “Does it again beat for me?” he asks.

“You are more of a fool than I thought if you believed it ever stopped,” Nasir tells him.

- 

Spartacus does not seem surprised when they announce their intent to leave. It is not just Agron and Nasir; there are more who wish to create a new life for themselves away from memory and shadow of Rome. Agron does not lead them – their fates are in their own hands from this point onward.

They leave with Crassus yet two days behind the rebel horde, and when the sun crests on the third day after their departure, Agron fancies he can hear the clash of steel carried on the wind.

They all look back, but no one turns around.

The nights eventually grow warmer and Nasir no longer shivers at all in his arms.

- 

Agron’s place in this world as always been with a sword in his hand. He knows how to have his blade sing through the air and rend flesh like thinnest cloth, and the warmth of enemy blood splattered upon cheek. He knows how to kill with the edge of his shield or his bare hands in the absence of sharpened steel.

But he also knows the texture of his lovers skin, how it stretches over bone and how soft it is in the places no Roman weapon has ever reached. He knows the scent of his hair and the hunger in his kisses. He knows the shape of his mouth as he smiles and how his laugh rumbles in his chest as he lies close to Agron’s body in their tent.

And there are other things he will come to know and learn to know – such as the taste of a freedom that is not accompanied by the stench of death or tinted red with blood, and the absence of the weight of arms and armour or the need to kill for the right to live.

- 

“Were it not for you, I would have fallen by Roman hand long ago,” Agron tells Nasir many winters later.

Nasir shakes his head against Agron’s chest and Agron can taste his smile in the kiss they share. “With me absent, you would have found yourself another small warrior to warm your bed,” he teases gently. He cannot remember any man beside himself Agron ever regarded with the same admiration, but there must have been at least one at some point.

“With you absent, I would not have found my way here,” Agron says into the skin of his neck, and that Nasir cannot contest, because it is the truth.


End file.
